HMT West Annual Meeting

October 25, 2010

Meeting Participants

The NOAA Hydrometeorology Testbed (HMT) held its Annual Meeting on October
7-8, in Santa Rosa, California. Attendees shared accomplishments from
HMT-West and discussed next steps for research, development, and research
to operations (R2O). The target audience was the HMT-West Regional
Implementation Team including key stakeholders and partners. The meeting
was hosted by the Sonoma County Water Agency, and the forty-one
participants included representatives from universities and a number of
federal, state and local government agencies.

Key outcomes include a raised awareness of HMT-West activities and
successes and remaining challenges; ideas for a framework for planning and
executing transitions from HMT-West for both NWS and external stakeholders;
guidance to inform the development of a 5-10 year road map for HMT-West;
and suggestions for improving the coordination of the coming season's field
operations. By consensus, four topics were selected for increased research
to operations emphasis and training with the NWS.

HMT is a national research strategy of regional demonstration projects for
improving the accuracy and lead-time of extreme precipitation and flood
forecasts and warnings, to better understand and manage water resources in
a changing climate. HMT's aim is to accelerate the development and
prototyping of advanced hydrometeorological observations, models, and
physical process understanding, and to foster infusion of these advances
into forecasting operations of the NWS, especially for flood forecasting.
In the cool season of FY 2011, HMT will conduct deployments in Arizona,
California, Colorado and Washington State, and begin implementing key
components of HMT-SE in North Carolina.

Since its inception in 2004, HMT has grown considerably in both geographic
scope and overall effort, and is engaging with a growing spectrum of
stakeholders. It has developed new paradigms in west coast forecasting,
which have been successfully demonstrated, and in some cases are being
implemented long-term. In addition, a number of related projects, such as
CalWater and components of NOAA’s Rapid Response to the Howard Hanson Dam
crisis, are built upon and/or leverage the HMT framework. This meeting
assessed progress in HMT, and informed planning of future efforts.